Tuning near field radiation by doped silicon

In this letter, we demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that bulk silicon can be employed to overcome the challenge of tuning near field radiation. Theoretical calculation shows that the nanoscale radiation between bulk silicon and silicon dioxide can be tuned by changing the carrier concentration of silicon. Near field radiation measurements are carried out on multiple bulk silicon samples with different doping concentrations. The measured near field conductance agrees well with theoretical predictions, which demonstrates a tuning range from 2 nW/K to 6 nW/K at a gap of ∼60 nm.